Equal Time

After commenting on last week’s blog about my father, a friend pointed out that I rarely have written about my mother.   “Hmmm,” I said.  “I’m sure you’re right.”

I believe that my experience is not unusual, that a parent and child can struggle a whole lifetime and never truly understand one another. They can each long for that special bond that is supposed to be there.  They can work very hard to either continue to search for ways to find that deep connection or develop masks that say to the rest of the world it is there while knowing it is not.  They can develop a love that makes a relationship, but, if they do not accept and embrace and work on that relationship rather than the one they wish they had, it is never enough.

All relationships contain dichotomies and interesting contradictions. On some days it is the differences that spark the right amount of tension but on other days it is what the two people have in common that provides strength.  While my mother would have never called herself a feminist, she was one. Well, an early one, who had ambition, worked outside the home, even for a little while after she married, in an era when most women did not.  When a guest speaker at her church circle had them start off an exercise by simply writing their name at the top of a piece of paper, she was one of the few who understood the facilitator’s point when it was revealed that 100% of them had written “Mrs. Husband’s First Name Last Name.”  She tried to not limit or define herself by dad’s name after that.

She was a lifelong learner, was good at most things she tried, and had an opinion about everything.  She valued her friends and loved nature.  Her competitive streak developed early in her life and continued even when she couldn’t speak or shuffle the deck but still wanted to play cards.  It was over cards we had the best times.  Somehow that shared activity provided a venue for talk and laughter.

You know how some things tickle your fancy and in trying to describe what is so funny, it just gets lost?  This is one of those stories. My mother’s and my biggest laugh came on a summer day in 1962.  We were returning home from a picnic with relatives at Niagara Falls.  Growing up in Buffalo, trips over the Peace Bridge connecting the US and Canada were common and easy. That day we picked up Aunt Alice and Uncle Reg from their apartment in Fort Erie and had a lovely afternoon.  Later, at customs the Canadian officer asked what was on the back seat.  “Just the rest of our lunch and some berries I saw,” my mother said. 

He waved us on.  About halfway over the bridge we started to laugh at that description, both of us laughing until there were tears.  Up to the week she died we could mention that afternoon and both of us would smile.

Memories can warm or chill.  I’m glad my friend encouraged me to find warmth from a different source for this week’s musing.  Wishing you courage to find an old smile as well.

Marilyn